DADT & the DC March
The conservative Washington Times' White House correspondent, Matthew Mosk, has a gays-and-Obama piece in today's paper, and while the anti-gay activist Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness is quoted, so are a few gay advocates.
I especially like that the head of the LGBT community's premier legal group is the leader expressing our collective frustration, and I'm really pleased to know that the White House press office, which didn't get back to Mosk, was asked yet again about the gay promises made by Obama before the election.
It may be the dog days of summer in Washington, and the White House staff is trying to take a vacation from politics, but I'm glad I played a small part in generating this story and letting the Obama administration know one sure thing: LGBT advocacy is not on hiatus.
From the Washington Times:
"There's a lot of frustration with the pace of change," said Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal, a gay advocacy group that has been urging the president to at least halt enforcement of the policy. "We disappeared from the radar screen after the election." [...]
In recent days, the White House has been involved in discussions about a possible presidential role in a gay-rights march on Washington scheduled for October. Those gestures, though, have not quieted a demand for action.
"I don't want four years to pass and find that cocktail parties in the White House is all we have to show for it," said Michael Petrelis, a longtime activist from California. [...]
The White House didn't return a message requesting comment about its stance on "don't ask, don't tell," but Steve Elmendorf, a lobbyist for the gay-advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign, said the White House thinks it would require congressional action to revoke the policy, a stance that is the subject of dispute.
Mr. Elmendorf said he suspects the president has calculated that a legislative battle is not worth waging at this point, especially if it cannot be won.
"Obama clearly wants to repeal it," Mr. Elmendorf said. "But there is a sense there aren't the votes in the Congress to do it right now."
2 comments:
PART 1: Thank you for drawing our attention to this, Michael, and for your own entirely on-point statement to the paper.
Permit me to both comment on and correct other parts of the article.
1. This is apparently one of those articles that sat unpublished for a while after being written as they fail to mention that courageous Rep. Alcee L. Hastings released a SECOND letter re DADT to the President last Thursday, reiterating his and his colleagues’ original points and expressing his shock that, after over two months, the President has not seen fit to even tell 77 elected members of the House of Representatives, “Fuck off and die" er "I won't do that and here is why."
2. They are simply wrong that “Official Pentagon statistics have not been updated since 2007.” In May, the Boston Globe published the number they were given by the Pentagon: 619 were discharged in 2008. Further, Cong. Jim Moran (D-VA) reported earlier that the Pentagon told him that the Army alone discharged 11 in January of this year.
3. I agree, I believe, with you that the June “Stonewall” White House event was functionally meaningless, and, given its last minute organization and occurence on the day AFTER the Stonewall anniversary, was demonstrably solely motivated by a desperate need to calm the restless natives.
4. As I’ve expressed before, with no disrespect to the accomplishments of Harvey Milk, the fact that he was chosen over the overwhelmingly more deserving Frank Kameny, whom the President has acknowledged in other, minor ways, proves that it was an entirely politically motivated choice; literal and figurative “box office” over historical fact and worth.
5. As for the hot air-inflated stories that “the White House has been involved in discussions about a possible presidential role in a gay-rights march on Washington scheduled for October,” the Earth will sooner revolve around the moon than he appear in person at the event and should he appear by video one need only remember the video appearance by President Clinton at the 1993 march and what happened [and did not] afterwards.
PART 2:
6. Certainly “the president's position has been that the White House simply cannot act alone” on DADT but it is equally true that he is indefensibly, shall we say, misrepresenting the facts. No signature but his would be legally required on an executive order freezing discharges. [We trust the paper mischaracterized HRC’s Steve Elmendorf comment for no one is asserting that would “revoke the policy” as repeal would.]
As the legal experts at the Palm Center at UC Santa Barbara have DOCUMENTED:
“Congress has authorized the President, via statute, to suspend any law regarding military separations during national security emergencies [which, be their definition, we are in now]. Hence, AN EXECUTIVE ORDER WOULD NOT BE A MATTER OF THE PRESIDENT CHOOSING TO ‘NOT ENFORCE A LAW’ BUT AN APPROPRIATE EXERCISE OF EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY GRANTED DIRECTLY BY CONGRESSIONAL STATUTE … consistent with, not ignor[ing], standing law. This authority includes the power to suspend laws such as 10 United States Code § 654 [aka Don't Ask, Don't Tell].”
That statute is “Title 10 United States Code § 12305”:
“AUTHORITY OF THE PRESIDENT TO SUSPEND CERTAIN LAWS RELATING TO PROMOTION, RETIREMENT, AND SEPARATION: Notwithstanding ANY other provision of law, during any period members of a reserve component are serving on active duty pursuant to an order to active duty under authority of section 12301, 12302, or 12304 of this title, THE PRESIDENT MAY SUSPEND ANY PROVISION OF LAW relating to promotion, retirement, OR SEPARATION applicable to ANY MEMBER of the armed forces WHO THE PRESIDENT DETERMINES is essential to the national security of the United States.”
Further, per documentation by the Palm Center:
“’Don’t ask, don’t tell’ as codified by Congress, grants broad authority to the Secretary of Defense to devise and implement the procedures under which investigations, separation proceedings, and other personnel actions will be carried out.
No less than the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as well as those 77 members of the House of Representatives—hardly lawbreakers—have asked the President to freeze discharges under one or more of those LEGAL options until repeal can happen. As have SLDN, HRC, NGLTF, Knights Out, AVER, and Servicemembers United.
7. Despite the paper’s suggestion to the contrary, an executive order freezing discharges or Obama’s finally keeping his promise to throw his administration’s weight behind efforts to repeal would only be as “divisive” as he allows it to be. With the wide margins supporting repeal, even among conservative Republican voters, if framed in terms of strengthening the war against terrorism, no opponent would stick their redneck out to be stepped on. In fact, were not the Repug Party controlled by rabid homohaters, his “weakening national security” through such discharges, as he himself phrased them, would be yet another issue for which they would be attacking him.
8. As recently as June, Senate Armed Service Committee Chair Carl Levin, who voted against passage of DADT in 1993, and has criticized it ever since said:
“It requires presidential leadership. This cannot be addressed successfully without that kind of leadership.”
9. Finally, we would remind the President of yet another position he took during the campaign when he reminded voters of this statement by FDR to black civil rights icon A. Philip Randolph [mentor to Bayard Rustin] that he said he’d like applied to him as well:
"You know, Mr. Randolph, I've heard everything you've said tonight, and I couldn't agree with you more. I agree with everything that you've said, including my capacity to be able to right many of these wrongs and to use my power and the bully pulpit. … But I would ask one thing of you, Mr. Randolph, and that is GO OUT AND MAKE ME DO IT."
In short, we're simply asking Obama to do what he promised he would ... and doing what he asked us to.
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